Chapter 11

The mine gets a little messy

The entrance to the mine showed recent signs of use, a camp of some kind had been set up and not cleared up very well. The remains of a fire pit, a cast aside pot, a few bones were all in evidence. The boards across the mine entrance were long ago torn down and thrown aside, and the entrance to the place descended into darkness.

"I'll go check it 'ot," Snarly announced. "See what awaiths us further in."

"Would I not be the logical choice?" Hanz asked him.

"How good are you at ditharming trapth?"

"I admit it's not my area of expertise. But I can become invisible."

"So can I!"

"Really? You have some hitherto unannounced means at your disposal?"

"Are you making up words again?" Malachite asked them.

"I assure you my lexicon is quite genuine."

"No, the," Snarly stepped over to me. "I have an Orchid. Can you put yer invisicabitily 'pell on me?"

"Sure," I answered simply, feeling around for ambient mana. I didn't feel anything like the cultists would leave behind or gather to work with whatever they were doing, but there was a normal amount of magic here so I grabbed as much extra as I could and cast it on him.

"I'll be back," his disembodied voice told us, trailing off into the mouth of the cave.

"Everyone knows I can just look in there with my magic, right?" I asked no one in particular. "I've done it before?"

"Would it work in this case?" Hanz asked. "It is a mine, after all."

"I… guess not? What are you getting at?"

"In the past we've had a fairly short distance to travel before reaching the rooms, which were lit. So it was easy for your magic to reach down and see what was there. You could see down the stairs and knew where the door was. This is an abandoned mine. The tunnels could stretch for miles before whoever owned it gave up and left it as a lost cause. How would your magic know where to look? And I assume most of the tunnels if not all of them are dark. It is my understanding goblins can see perfectly well in the darkness."

"Both of those things would work against me, it's true," I admitted. "So I guess Snarly going ahead was a good move."

"If he can even get very far, I doubt his vision is that good to move much past the mouth of the cave. Unless Malachite, you can see in total darkness?" Malachite shook his head. "Pity. Then unless you have magic to do so, we are going to be in a bit of a bind."

"Any amount of light will give us away, even disguised as goblins," Malachite decided. "That is what we were planning to do, yes?"

"Yes. I had hoped there would be more activity here, and we could waylay a few goblins and take their place with magic. Then just follow them down to the work area and steal the diamond that is our target as well as any others they've mined. No such luck though."

"I do have a light spell," I admitted. "But it's fairly unconventional."

"How so?"

I reached into my bag to pull out my spellbook. "Let me just look it over, it's been quite awhile since I cast it. Basically whoever is going to be in the lead can have a shield made of light. That will light our way."

"I don't fight with a shield," Hanz told us. "And it could interfere with my bow. Malachite?"

"I usually just use my claws."

"The spell gives you the ability to use it with at least some level of skill. Hang on." I read the spell over. "Wait, why did I even learn this spell? I didn't think this was right but it is. This is no good!"

"What's the problem?" Malachite asked.

"The problem is I can't cast it on anyone else. I have to cast it on myself. I have to carry the stupid thing around! That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What magic user wants a huge shield attached to their arm? I'm the dumbest magic user for learning this stupid spell. What could I have been thinking?" Why wasn't the spell developed to be cast on other people? I don't believe this!

"It doesn't seem your style," Hanz admitted. "But we are stuck with it for the moment. I suppose one of us could carry a torch but as I've said these tunnels could go for miles."

"I'm back!" announced Snarly, appearing out of nowhere.

"How far did you get?" Hanz asked him.

"Not far," he admitted. "But I smell dogs, and fungus, and mud. Someone goes back and forth through here a bunch."

"I guess I'll carry the stupid shield then," I announced, putting my book away. "Because I'm too stupid to learn a simple light spell, or a spell to let me see in the dark, both of which would have been far more useful to learn!"

I was still fuming as we walked through and checked the endless tunnels in the mine. Malachite had wrapped his hands in oil soaked rags he requested I light on fire should we get into trouble, and I had to admit it was an interesting way to use his newfound immunity to fire. He was bringing up the rear, Hanz and Snarly were in the lead. There were old, rusting out tracks for a mine cart of some kind still bolted to the floor, but not much else. The place was quiet apart from us, but Snarly did say the smell of dogs was getting stronger.

And then it seemed we were upon them. There was a flash from ahead, and Malachite and I looked at one other because we knew what that meant. Hanz was firing their laser at something.

"Flame on!" Malachite told me, thrusting his hands out.

Put everything in the box in a second, I decided, get him into the fight now. I did, making him grin and round the corner at full speed. As I took a breath and calmed myself, putting my emotions in the box as I had been trained, the fire wobbled and went wild, as if he had tripped over something. A rock maybe? Not a great beginning.

I peeked my head around the corner, looking through the shield figuring I was being dragged down by the stupid thing I may as well use it for cover and saw Malachite struggling to hold onto a shaggy, horse sized wolf while another was chewing on Hanz.

"Oh bother," they were saying, trying to keep their balance on one leg. "He seems to have torn my leg almost clean off! Perhaps a little help here?"

I looked past them, one of the massive creatures was down, his head smoldering where Hanz must have lasered him. Snarly was poised to strike so I figured it was a good opportunity to try out the new spell I had purchased. I gestured and spoke the first word of the incantation. Magic swirled around one of his blades and it radiated magic, so I turned my attention to Malachite. A quick spell to balk the wolf's next defensive action and I figured we were in pretty good shape. Hanz went to shoot the dog that was snapping at them, hit, but the beast shrugged it off. But what was even worse was, Snarly struck out with the magical knife and somehow completely missed! Yes, the beast lunged to the side at the last second so the strike went wide, and the magic vanished. This would have irked me to no end, had my emotions not been held in check by the box, so I tried my spell of dazzling an opponent. It didn't even work, I flubbed the incantation trying to maintain concentration on the shield.

By that time the wolf had gotten tired of chewing on Hanz's armor and must have realized I was there, he tried to lunge past the remnant but even with one leg, Hanz held him back. "Perhaps a bit more offensive magic is called for?" he suggested.

None of my magic is that offensive- oh they mean the other way. "One second!" I covered Malachite again, casting my spell to make the beast more likely to miss his next attack and then I slammed the one closest to me with air as Snarly stabbed it from behind and Hanz lasered it again. This confused and enraged the beast, and Snarly gave a yell, jumping up on top of the thing to stab it again. He can hardly miss this time, no? I quickly cast the spell to empower his strike and he drove his knives home, this time the magic worked wonders and the wolf slumped to the side. One remains.

With their leg busted and sticking at a weird angle Hanz returned their weapon to the hand configuration and took the bow off their shoulders. I was wondering why they were carrying that thing around. I guess they plan to use it?

"I'm low on power," they called to us. "Get me a clear shot!"

Ah, the weapon built into them must have some sort of limitation, unlike magic which is just everywhere and I can draw upon without limit. If they fired it too much perhaps they would even cease to function. This gave me a glimmer of an idea but there was no time to explore it now. I tried to dazzle the beast but again, the fates were not with me and it fizzled. Stupid shield. But to drop it now would be a disaster, it's our only source of light. I guess apart from Malachite's blazing hands.

Malachite had hold of the beast, the fire from his hands licking the fur and he was trying to rip chunks out of it or something. Hanz readied an arrow and I took the full time to cast my air spell, and both helped to finish the beast off, which slumped to the floor.

"Anyone hurt?" I asked, now coming into the chamber where the wolves were. It was just a hollowed out part of the mine they must have done more digging in, making it bigger than the surrounding tunnels.

"I'm fine," Malachite said, and Snarly agreed, looking around and keeping his daggers at the ready.

"Then let me have a look at that leg. Malachite, bring that fire over here will you?"

"Sure thing."

With the light of the flames nearby I dropped the shield and focused on my repairing magic. Pulling mana and carefully making the required gestures repair magic shimmered around the leg. Nothing happened. "This is bad. It could be too far gone for my magic to fix. I'll try again." I did so, and again failed. "I'm sorry, I don't know what to do!"

"Not a problem," they told me. "My own systems can self repair, given time. If we can be sure this room is safe for a few minutes, perhaps you can try again and your magic can then succeed."

"There's a big 'ole in the wall," Snarly told us. "Well, big fer me, anyway."

"Show me," Malachite told him, and the two of them moved off to the far wall. I stayed by Hanz's side, casting a grade 0 light spell to at least give us a candle flame's worth of light. "Yeah, it's a small hole into the next chamber," he called back. "I can hear voices beyond too, there's people in there."

"We should seal off the entrance in some way," Hanz suggested. "But our available materials are few."

"Oh, I can think of something," Malachite said with a grin. He started dragging one of the wolf bodies towards the hole, and we heard him shoving the thing in there. "It'll take them a while to dig that out of there!" he announced.

"I'll be right back," I told Hanz, and made myself useful webbing up the corpse, so it would be harder to push out from that side. With that done we waited a few tense minutes, expecting goblins or worse to emerge from holes in the walls they were digging at this very moment. But nothing happened. After five minutes I tried my repair spell again, and was rewarded with their leg snapping back into place. It wasn't fully repaired but one more spell did the job and they stood up again.

"Good as new," they announced, jumping on it. "Well done, thank you."

"Thank you for stopping that thing from getting to me," I told them. I touched their armor and cast my spell to measure things, getting back a depressing result. The dents were pretty bad, and the armor was really thin and even broken in places. "Sorry, your armor is even further gone, I don't think I can work on repairing it at all." The leg is something I can concentrate the magic on. The armor is all one piece, it will disperse the magic too much. A simple dent I could take care of easily but this?

"No bother, if needed I will simply do the human thing, toss it aside and buy a new one. Shall we proceed?"

"Can you get rid of the webbing?" Malachite asked. "I don't want to get all sticky, not that way anyway. I mean..."

"I have no idea what you mean," I told him. "But that thing isn't going this way, it's going that way."

"You don't mean..."

"Like uncorking a bottle of wine," I told him, beginning to cast. I set the webs on fire and used my thrusting spell to shove the corpse of the wolf through the hole. It wasn't pretty, as the hole was a bit smaller than it was. So bones snapped and fur went flying out the hole on the other side. Screams drifted back to us, and I must admit I felt a certain sense of satisfaction before I closed the box on my emotions again.

"Can you cast on the fire?" Malachite asked excitedly. "Blow the whole room up?"

"Perhaps offer surrender first?" I suggested. "Let's not reach for the top shelf stuff right off the bat." I really don't want to use that spell again, thank you very much. It nearly got us all killed, and didn't kill the thing I was trying to kill. Then with the bug people… It's still painful to think about. If I can avoid it, let's solve this another way that doesn't involve cooking everyone in there and maybe blowing fire out this passageway towards us and roasting us as well.

"What do bats have to do with it? Spoilsport."

"I shall make the offer," Hanz decided. "I can fit easily enough through here. One side please."

They crawled through the hole and though it was muffled I could have sworn they were saying something like "Orc? Orc orc!" There was a flash as they scrambled back, and there was a cry of rage and despair from the other side. Also some kind of a beeping sound as Hanz backed up out of the hole and stood up again.

"Well, he's on fire now," Hanz announced. "Didn't seem to want to parley. But I only hit his arm. An arm for a leg, as the saying goes. I'm sure someone says that."

We looked through, with Malachite shouting "now, now, now, flame him now!" and I could see him staggering back, on fire from the laser. I sighed and started to cast. But this time I clenched only the muscles in my right side as hard as possible. I knew it would imbalance the flow of Mars magic and make the spell less effective. Which is what I wanted, because I didn't want to cook myself. The spell went off, a minor detonation compared to the others I had caused with the spell, meaning while he was now more on fire, he wasn't dead.

"You're off your game today," Malachite complained. "I guess we'll go finish him off." He climbed into the hole.

"You're off your game today," I sarcastically repeated. "You try not killing yourself with magic. Oh that's right you can't because you can't do magic! Like this!" I put my invisibility spell on him so he could strike from surprise and waited. A few seconds later there was a tearing sound, as (I would come to see in a moment) he simply ripped the orc apart.

With all of us now in the larger room the work was being done in we found the large diamond we were there for in a bucket near the back corner, and saw shadowy figures watching us from various small side tunnels all around the room. There didn't seem to be any valuables, no other diamonds mined making me wonder if there even were any to find here. Malachite said he would cover me if I wanted to ask, so I did.

"Are there diamonds of value to be had in the walls of this room."

Yes

"Okay, let's go see if they want to talk," I told him, casting another spell to be understood. I didn't want them to be able to claim they didn't speak my language, after all. I can probably do "mining" a lot faster than these guys can with my sculpting spell. Just move the walls of the cave around until the diamonds fall out. Easy. But not with them all looking at me. "Hey you in the walls!" I shouted. "You're looking for diamonds? Let's make a deal!"

"Don't want any stupid diamonds!" a voice called back.

"Right, we'll leave you half of- wait what?"

"Orc wanted diamonds. Orc is dead. We're not working here anymore! We go home!"

"You don't want any diamonds?"

"You stupid or something? What did I just say?"

"Don't insult her, you saw what they did!"

"I'm just telling the truth."

"Be quiet!"

"So can we look? You don't care if we take any diamonds?"

"We do care! You killed orc master, that's fine. But you leave now. No come back!"

"How does that make sense? If you don't want them..."

A rock sailed past me. "You leave!"

"What's going on?" Malachite asked.

"They don't want any diamonds, but I guess they don't want us getting any either."

"Typical," he snorted. "Let's just go. This place stinks of mud now."

"Well, okay, if you want." Malachite passing up a chance to get something valuable because there's a bit of danger? Maybe he is learning something after all? "Fine. We're leaving. Got that? You attack us from behind, and you'll regret it!"

"Yes, yes, you go now. We don't make trouble!"

"You better not." I dropped the spell. "Come on." Ugh, time to cast the stupid shield spell again.

We headed out and wound our way back up to the surface, the fresh air feeling good on our faces. "Wait, someone remembered to grab the diamond, right?" Malachite asked.

"I thought you had it!" Hanz insisted, holding his hands up. "I don't have it."

"Itth not with me, 'onest!" Snarly put in.

"Oh wait it's right here," Malachite told us, holding it up. "Gotcha!"

"I'm rubbing off on you," Hanz announced, sounding proud. "Well done."

"Good job everyone," I praised. "I think we did okay in there. We only killed an orc and some wolves, wouldn't want them running around the countryside. Let's get away from this place just in case they decide they do want the diamond after all, and tomorrow maybe we can head to the volcano and check out that bandit cache."

"Sounds good," Malachite agreed. "But I still wanted an earth shattering kaboom."

I just rolled my eyes. No, you really didn't.

Little did I know that very soon, Malachite would get his wish...